fiO FLOWERS AND FRUITS. 



of Tuscany, at Pisa. From a jealous and selfish anxiety, that he 

 should continue to be the sole possessor of a plant so charming 

 and so rare, he strictly charged his gardener not to give a single 

 sprig or even a flower, to any person. This gardener might have 

 been faithful if he had not loved ; but being attached to a fair, 

 though portionless damsel, he presented her with a boquet on her 

 birth day ; and in order to render it more acceptable, ornamented 

 it with a sprig of Jessamine. The young maiden, to preserve the 

 freshness of this pretty stranger, placed it in the earth, where it 

 remained green until the return of spring, when it budded forth, and 

 was covered with flowers. She had profited by her lover's lessons, 

 and now cultivated her highly prized Jessamine with care, for which 

 she was amply repaid by its rapid growth. The poverty of the 

 lovers had been a bar to their union ; now however she had amassed 

 a little fortune, by the sale of the cuttings, from the plant which love 

 had given her, and bestowed it with her hand upon the gardener of 

 her heart. The young girls of Tuscany in remembrance of this 

 adventure, always deck themselves on their wedding day with a 

 nesegay of Jessamine ; and they have a proverb, that she who is 

 worthy to wear a nosegay of Jessamine, is* as good as a fortune to 

 her husband. The oil of Jessamine, was formerly celebrated in 

 Italy as a specific for rheumatism and paralysis, at present its only 

 use is to perfume. It is obtained by alternating layers of cotton, 

 saturated with oil of benne, and exposed in a covered vessel to the 

 heat of the sun ; the flowers are renewed, till the oil becomes 

 impregnated with their odor, when it is separated from the cotton 

 by pressure. 



